On September 30th, join the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute, in collaboration with Hunter College New York City Food Policy Center and Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education & Policy at Columbia University, for a jointly-organized online public forum “NY Food 20/20: Visions, Research and Recommendations for Food Systems During COVID-19 and Beyond.”

The three academic institutions, which are leading food policy research centers in New York City, have joined forces to monitor and assess New York City’s food system response to COVID-19 over the next 18 months and produce the first independent assessment of the effects of COVID-19 on our food system and an assessment of the many public and private responses.

In this first panel discussion of NY Food 20/20, the Centers will begin to examine the effects of the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences on New York’s food system and the health and wellbeing of New Yorkers. The Centers will also discuss the creation and early implementation of some of the City’s responses to COVID-19 related food system changes.

Panelists will discuss the concrete actions that public officials and agencies, civil society groups and others can take with a focus on how to minimize the harms and maximize the opportunities to address the underlying problems the pandemic has exacerbated. They will identify possible steps New York City can take to minimize the inequitable distribution of burdens of the pandemic by socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity. Finally, speakers will suggest strategies to enable New York City’s food system to respond to a possible resurgence of the epidemic in the coming months or to new opportunities to open and rebuild the City.